Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus
when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Fermo posta Tinto Brass

(a.k.a. P.O. Box Tinto Brass, 1995)

The widely disbelieved story that Brass regularly receives mail from his female fans who confess their sexual adventures and fantasies is actually true. This movie, freely adapted and inspired from such letters, as well as similar published letters, is a laff riot. Much of the humor derives from Riz Ortolani’s music track, which is wildly incongruous in its unerotic bounciness. For reasons that escape me, porn connoisseurs who publish their opinions on the web are displeased with this film. Maybe that’s because they’re porn connoisseurs who wanted another Paprika??? I, on the other hand, am a comedy connoisseur, and so this movie suited me just fine. It consists of eight stories (or nine or ten or eleven or twelve, depending on how you want to count them), and several had me folded over with laughter. With this film, in my opinion at least, Brass came of age in his new rôle as a master of erotica. He finally figured out how to make it all work together, which is not easy to do.

Yes, that really is Brass’s office. Yes, that really is where he auditions young ladies. My guess is that the kids in the photos on the wall are his grandkids. Stacked around the office are film cans labeled L’urlo and NEROSUBIANCO and so forth. Oooooooo how much I want to dig into those!

Hours and hours on the Internet, getting bleary-eyed with Google, and I still can’t identify all the actors. Can anyone help?

The English dub is censored — very censored.

This movie brings into focus ideas that Brass had not completely articulated in his previous films, and it explains why some of his erotica, unlike almost any other erotica, is completely inoffensive: he’s a female chauvinist. I don’t know if he would ever admit it, but his firm conviction that women are superior to men in every way is obvious from his body of work.

WHERE DID WE HEAR THAT BEFORE? Several musical pieces come from Paprika. The cheesy jazz tune in “Ivana” episode we heard before in Miranda, Paprika, and L’uomo che guarda. The main theme from L’uomo che guarda is re-used here for the “Le mutandine” episode. “Incontri” is the only episode that promises us serious eroticism, but then just as things are about to get really kinky, a bouncy theme from Capriccio is re-used.

SELF-REFERENCES: On the office of Brass’s wall, in addition to posters for some of his films, there is an unused prop from Snack Bar Budapest: a small sign for the Cine Tabù.

The out-of-print Italian Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US equipment.

The new Italian DVD, a little bit cropped, but with optional English subtitles and a nice interview with Tinto! It’s Region-2 and PAL, and so it will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.

The censored dubbed-into-muffled-English Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US equipment.

ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali

Jacopo Capanna e Guiseppe Perugia presentano
un film di Tinto Brass